Story Highlights

INDIANAPOLIS – The call came on his drive home from practice, two days before the playoff opener, two weeks before the due date.

“Can you come now?” his 38-weeks pregnant wife begged.

“Right now?” Eric Ebron answered.

“Right now,” she said.

When your wife is 38 weeks pregnant, you listen. So Eric Ebron’s trip home from the Colts’ West 56th Street practice facility last Thursday turned into a U-turn bound for the airport. He caught the first flight to Houston he could. He didn’t pack a bag. The doctors tried to delay for dad’s arrival, but the contractions intensified. It was time. The baby was coming.

By 7:30 that evening the Colts’ Pro Bowl tight end walked into a Houston-area hospital and met his newborn son. Aiden, they called him.

“You talk about it, like, ‘What if you’re in the playoffs and we have a baby?” Ebron said Wednesday amidst his whirlwind of a week. “Well, the man answer is ‘We’ll get there when we get there.’ Well, we’re here now...”

He smiles. He says this will be a heck of a story in a few years.

Because 45 hours after meeting his son, Ebron was on the field at NRG Stadium, snagging the Colts’ first touchdown in a 21-7 wild card win over the Texans. After the game, he scooped up his 14-month old son, Oliver, and chauffeured him into the victorious locker room. When the Colts headed for the airport a few hours later, Ebron headed back to the hospital. Back to dad duty, at least for a few days.

He returned to Indianapolis on Monday to begin preparation for Saturday’s divisional round game in Kansas City, a showdown that’ll feature the two most dangerous tight ends in football in 2018 – Ebron (13 touchdowns in the regular season) and the Chiefs’ Travis Kelce (10). His wife, Gabriela, stayed back in Houston, her hometown and where they live in the offseason, with the newborn and two grandmothers willing to help. “Happiness and sadness,” Eric called it. “(Because) you have to come back here and leave your child.”

So for the time being, the sleepless nights will have to wait. Ebron will remain locked in as long as this Colts’ playoff run lasts.

And when it’s over, he’ll be prepared: He’s already purchased a minifridge for the baby’s bedroom, so he won’t have to trek downstairs in the middle of the night to fetch a fresh bottle. Veteran move.

“She’s really strong, she’s super strong,” he says of his wife. “I know she’s going through it, but my time is coming.”

Eric Ebron snagged 13 touchdown catches during the regular season this year, most of any tight end in football.(Photo: Matt Kryger/IndyStar)

And when he’s not in a meeting, not watching film, and not on the practice field, he’s on the phone, FaceTiming with his family. “I call all day,” Ebron says. “I’m on the phone all day.”

He shakes his head at the coincidence – of all the places the Colts could have been playing the weekend Gabriela goes into labor, they’re playing in Houston, where they have a home. He was at the hospital Thursday night into Friday morning before hopping over to the Colts’ team hotel and rejoining the team, attending pregame meetings that evening. He played Saturday afternoon. Caught his touchdown pass. Then, soon as the team headed back to the airport, he headed back to the hospital.

“It’s not like we planned (to be in Houston),” he said. “That’s the man above. He planned it out for us, so it worked out beautifully.”

So has Ebron’s first season in Indianapolis. He was on the sideline late Saturday afternoon when he thanked his first-year head coach, Frank Reich, for recruiting him during free agency. The Lions cut Ebron back on March 16; one of his first calls was from Reich, who begged him to become a part of what he wanted to build in Indy. He signed a two-year deal with the Colts days later.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” Ebron told Reich.

“We’re here because of you,” Reich told him.

Four days later, he’s asked about the most magical season of his career.

"From the first meeting, he’s just put so much confidence and faith in the things I’m able to do, the things that he believes I can help this team with,” Ebron said. “We have nothing to do but thank him. Without him believing in me, who knows how the Colts would’ve ended up, who knows where I would be? I feel like my piece in this is really important, and without (Reich), I wouldn’t be here in this situation.”

Neither would the Colts. From the lows of his four-year run in Detroit, the “bust” label and the boos, Ebron’s turned the corner. He became a husband. A dad. A Pro Bowler. He found a new home.

“Dear Aiden, this was for u,” he wrote on Instagram after the game, captioning a photo of his touchdown celebration – him rocking a baby to sleep. “I want you to be proud of me and always happy to call me your dad. I love you and your brother beyond words!”